Can you help me understand this Political Science question?
Description
Melissa Deckman’s School Board Battles presents a study of the politics of Christian conservatives’ entry into and service on local school boards. This academic study accompanies extensive media coverage of incidents of controversial school board choices including the elimination of the theory of evolution from science curricula and restructuring of sex education courses to include material and emphasis on abstinence. This book is an important complement for our course material—demonstrating how real-world politics works at the local level, and also how academic political science research proceeds.
Assignment
Choose one substantive chapter from the book (not the introduction, chapter 1, or the conclusion) and write a critical review of the author’s arguments and/or the methods used to study the topic of the chapter and/or the conclusions the author reaches. Your review should take the form of an essay, approximately four to five pages in length (typed, double-spaced, using twelve-point font). The maximum allowable length is six pages. Please see the “Critical Analysis Assignment” document in the Resources section for more information and guidance.
Resources and Direction
The appendix to School Board Battles is an excellent resource for this assignment. It contains the actual surveys that Deckman used to collect her data, as well as a description of the methods she used to conduct her research. Those of you who choose to critique her research design will find these very useful.
